Newington Plaza Seeking A New Lease On Life

Owner Pushing To Sell Property

November 29, 2012|By CHRISTOPHER HOFFMAN, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

NEWINGTON – — The owner of the dilapidated downtown Northwood Plaza shopping center has launched a new push to sell the property, setting the stage for its possible redevelopment.

"We're trying to market it," said Eric Gross, a trustee of the Hersher Management Trust, which owns the property. "Everyone knows what the economic situation has been. Not good. I think that things are turning around."

Gross, an attorney with the Green and Gross law firm in Bridgeport, said Thursday that the trust has received three inquiries about the 70,000-square-foot property in the last week. In addition, the trust is exploring the possibility of an auction, he said.

"We've had more interest in the last three weeks than in the last six months," Gross said. "We think we'll be able to move it, we hope to move it and we want to move it in a positive direction."

A new owner could fix up the property or knock it down and build a new structure, Gross said.

Northwood Plaza is located south of Market Square at the end of Lowery Place. The shopping center was fully rented in the mid-2000s with a Food Mart and about 14 other businesses occupying space, according to Economic Development Director Andrew Brecher.

When the recession hit, Food Mart left. The shopping plaza's owner, Easton real estate investor Kurt Hersher, died in 2009, and the property spent several years in probate before being placed in a trust, Brecher said. In the meantime, the number of tenants dwindled to two, he said.

Brecher, who has been meeting with the trust, said that the current owners have paid the taxes and the mortgage and done basic maintenance, but have no interest in revitalizing the shopping center.

Brecher welcomed the news that the trust was actively seeking a buyer. He said he's done an analysis showing a shopping center could succeed at the location, as it did in the 2000s. Reviving the property would compliment the revitalization of Market Square and the rest of downtown, he said.

""You have this decrepit area that is begging to be turned into something as nice as Market Square," Brecher said. "Based on the analysis, we think that it can do very well as a retail shopping center."

The trust needs to lower the price to sell the property, Brecher said. Hersher paid $6 million for the property in 2006, he said. The trust first asked $7.5 million, a number that went to $6.5 million and then to $4.9 million last year, he said.